How to Fight Bees & Get Honeycomb – ICARUS

Beehives and bee farming is a system introduced to ICARUS for all maps and DLCs, from Olympus thru Prometheus (so far). This guide will show you how to fight bees and get honeycomb without taking any damage, and how to deal with bees in your cave base. Since beehives now occupy the Grasslands/Plains biomes, as well as caves in all biomes, even mining iron can first require dealing with the bees.

How to Destroy Beehives Without Taking Damage

If you get too close to a beehive in the open or in caves, bee swarms will start to come out and attack you. Bee swarms are only vulnerable to melee damage (no thrown weapons or projectiles are effective), but their beehives are vulnerable to all damage. Therefore, to destroy beehives without taking any damage, the strategy is to attack once you see the beehive with ranged weapons from a distance too far to provoke the swarm.

Grasslands/Plains Beehives

In the open, this is simple. In the Grasslands/Plains biomes, beehives spawn in dead, hollow, broken tree trunks. Once you spot one, circle the beehive until you see the break in the trunk and launch ranged weapons at the opening. When you see damage numbers, you will know you are hitting the beehive. Deal about 150 damage and the beehive will break open, no more bee swarms will spawn from it, and you can run in and grab any honeycomb, bees, or bee queens left inside.

Cave Beehives

Cave beehives are a little trickier due to the lack of light, but the strategy is the same as for beehives in the Grasslands/Plains. Walk into the cave until you get a cave debuff and wait to see if any caveworms attack. Do not run into the cave. There can be both caveworms and beehives in a cave, so move slowly and kill any caveworms you see with ranged attacks.

Now, the problem is how to see the beehives in the dark without getting too close. The solution depends on how far you have teched up, but there is a solution for any level character:

• Tech Tiers 1-3: Use flare arrows. Shoot them into central areas so they illuminate large sections in neon green light. Cave beehives are usually tucked in the upper half of the cave walls and are shaped like large shells with vertical striations or creases.
  
• Tech Tier 4: Use your flashlight and slowly advance into the cave, scanning the walls from floor to ceiling for beehives. In this light, cave beehives can look bright yellow and very similar to gold ore nodes, so be careful.
  

Once you get to know the spawn locations in different types of caves, you won’t need to search for very long. As soon as you sight a cave beehive, destroy it with a ranged weapon before you advance any further. They have about 150 hit points and the shell will break apart and fall on the ground when destroyed. Clear the beehives and recover your ammo before doing anything else. Loot the beehives at the same time if you plan to loot them at all, since broken beehives will despawn fairly quickly.

Dealing with Beehives in Cave Bases

According to the developer, beehive spawning can be suppressed with an Electric Dehumidifier, just like caveworm spawns. Until you tech up to Tier 4, you’ll have to tolerate the beehives, just like the caveworms. 

To make it easier to clear the bees out each time, as well as the caveworms, illuminate the areas where they spawn using wall or floor torches and keep them well fueled. Each time you reenter the cave, look for the first beehive spawn location. If it has respawned, then the others likely have as well.

One more important thing to remember is to arm yourself and leave the cave every time you log off. This way, when you log in, any respawned beehives will not have a chance to spawn bee swarms before you can destroy them with ranged weapons.

We hope you found this bee hunting guide helpful as you move about Icarus. Let us know if you have any questions. What you think of the guide? What is your bee-hunting strategy?